Disclaimer: Mass Effect is the property of Bioware, Microsoft Game Studios, and Electronic Arts. I am none of these, and as such make no money from this venture.

Garrus Vakarian shivered. Even armour couldn't keep the chill of this frigid world from seeping in, but that wasn't what had him shaking like a leaf. No, it was the devastation before him that chilled his blood more than all the snows of Noveria. Shepard, the only human in his squad and its smallest member, was standing over the smouldering corpse of a Brute, covered in synthetic blood and laughing madly as she lifted its decapitated head in triumph.

When he'd first been assigned this command, Garrus hadn't thought much of the quiet ape. Shepard kept to herself, following orders with the barest acknowledgement and interacting little outside of combat. The other turian, Saren, had taken it as weakness and began to taunt her. He tired of the game quickly though, when he realised her only reaction was to stare flatly back or tilt her head as though she was trying to puzzle him out.

Liara T'Soni, one of two asari Commandos and their defacto intelligence expert, had wondered one night over drinks if maybe they'd gotten assigned a defective one. She admitted that she didn't have much information on the recently elevated species but surely the Council wouldn't have picked them without cause.

Their medic, Mordin, would only reveal that she was a slightly higher than average example of her species, physically, despite being a good deal younger than most humans he'd encountered. He had several theories about her mental state, but kept them to himself until more data could be obtained. To that end, he watched her constantly and with an atypical forthrightness. If Shepard was aware, she didn't show it.

In contrast, she passed entirely beneath the notice of Urdnot Wrex outside of combat. If they weren't taking down enemies together, the krogan didn't even acknowledge she existed. Given his rough handling of the rest of the squad, Garrus suspected that the Battlemaster actually had some sort of odd respect for Shepard.

Tali'Zorah was the only one to actually continue attempting conversation with the unnervingly quiet human. At first, the quarian Engineer received the same blank looks Saren had or the minute nods and sparse replies Shepard used with Garrus himself when he issued orders. Slowly however, Tali began to crack the human's shell.

After some time, the other Commando, Shiala, drifted into the small circle as well. Mordin postulated that the quarian's age and the asari's near-human appearance played significant roles in drawing Shepard out. He speculated, in his calculated off-hand manner, that the subjects discussed between the three females had more to do with shared interests and growing trust than mere girl-talk, as Saren had dismissed it as.

Despite the scarred turian's grumbling, months after having been formed they finally began working together rather than around each other and Garrus found their effectiveness in battle increase exponentially. None of their breakthroughs with the young human could have prepared them for this, however.

They'd been assured this was an easy posting. Well, as easy as it got in this damn war, but their actions on Feros and Therum had earned them a break and the only break to be had was a slightly less hostile world.

There were five squads spread across the main continent: one each deployed at three advance bases and two at the main bunker. None of the others had been assigned a human and, while she had opened up to their squad, she was still eerily quiet around other aliens. It was cold and desolate, but Shepard had begun to entertain them with what she claimed were Earth childrens' winter pastimes.

She showed them how to make snowmen that looked nothing like the males of any species any of them had ever encountered. She tried - and ultimately failed - to explain the reasoning behind snow angels, though she did manage to badger everyone except Saren into making one. And she introduced them to Wrex's new cold-weather favourite: snowball fights.

Overall the tour had been uneventful, so of course they'd been expecting the attack. What they hadn't expected was the sheer numbers the Reaper forces would commit to wiping out their small, backwater outpost. From what they could gather from the garbled reports of the advance scouts before they cut off in anguished screams, nearly triple their garrison strength had been sent planet-side to wipe them out.

Their first attempts to call in backup revealed the Reapers had some sort of jamming signal running. Tali worked frantically to crack it, aided by her counterpart from the other squad. Liara stood over them, her worry apparent only in the way she glanced from their work to the map that displayed heat signatures around the base.

No sooner had they managed a frantic request for heavy support or evac, whichever could come first, then the first explosions sounded outside. Mordin casually flipped switches on the console and large sections of the map flared brightly as he triggered buried ordnance and overloaded external power conduits that had once lead to the advance bases. When the fires cooled and the map had readjusted, less than a third of the original invasion force remained.

At the first indications that the outer walls were being breached, Wrex demanded they charge headfirst into the melee. Garrus ordered him back. The maze of corridors in the base and the bottlenecks to the innermost rooms would work to their advantage here. Against his warnings, the other squad moved forward, disappearing into the surrounding rooms and Garrus pressed his mandibles tight against his cheeks as he heard the first of their screams.

Gesturing for radio silence, he ordered his team to split in two and fall back. Mordin and Tali worked to rig the console for a remote explosion, Saren and Liara watching their backs. Wrex and Garrus headed the other team, Shiala and Shepard covering them as they lead the way out of the base.

They met little resistance, though he could hardly stop his Battlemaster from charging packs of husks and swarmers, the krogan's laughter echoing across the com. It was only once they reached the snow-swept surface that they found just what sort of attention they'd attracted.

Two Brutes paced just inside a defensive embankment roughly 300 meters away. Between them and his team were two Ravagers, a Banshee, and a small army of husks. Drawing back into the relative cover of the doorway, Garrus outlined a strategy he hoped would get them all through this alive.

Everything was going according to plan. Shiala and Wrex were tag-teaming the Ravagers, systematically taking them apart as they moved in and out of melee and dodged the charging Brutes. Shepard, between Incinerating swarmers and husks whenever they got too close, was concentrating her gunfire on the distended belly of the shrieking Banshee. Garrus pressed his mandibles close and set about Overloading the mutated asari's barrier and picking the armour from the Brutes with his sniper rifle.

It was as the first Ravager fell that things began going wrong. Shiala miscalculated the direction of her retreat from the dying creature's acid splash and, before anyone could shout a warning, she found herself dangling from the Banshee's elongated fingers. Struggling, the Commando's eyes went wide as its other hand come up as if in slow motion. The twisted grin that came over its face only added to her terror.

There was no way Garrus could fix this. Shiala's screams across the com were torturous. He couldn't get a clear shot on the Banshee from this angle, and he had no time to move. Wrex was just now turning to see where the asari had gone, occupied with the other Ravager as he was. Shepard... Garrus wasn't sure where she was. And then he found her.

His mandibles went slack; there was no way what he was seeing could really be happening. She had lost her gun somewhere; whether she'd dropped it or it had been ripped from her hands he wasn't sure. She'd also lost her helmet, and a quick glance around showed it crushed in the grip of a confused Brute. Shepard had climbed the hulking abomination, used its head as a springboard, and leapt at the distracted Banshee, rage etched on her normally calm features.

As those frighteningly sharp nails came together and began to descend, Garrus watched, gobsmacked, as their tiny human latched on to the Banshee's arm. She swung around, momentum launching her into a kick that caught the synthetic across the face. It staggered, dropping the shaken asari to claw at Shepard, who clung precariously to its shoulder.

It seemed that they'd just traded one endangered squad member for another, however, as the Banshee snagged Shepard by a leg. Instead, as Shiala struggled to gain her feet and Wrex continued to wear down the remaining Ravager, she reached up, grabbing a digit as thick as her arm and twisting it. With a sickening crack, Shepard tore the finger from its socket. As the Banshee dropped her, howling in pain, she flipped in mid-air and stabbed the nail into the mutant's chest, using her weight to slice it open from collarbone to crotch.

The stunned turian shook his head, trying to gather his scattered focus. Lining up his rifle, he ensured the Banshee fell with a shot that blew out the back of its head. In his scope, he could see Shepard already tearing through the surrounding husks using only her hands. Her armour was coated to the elbows in blue-white synthetic blood and she only laughed as more splashed across the rest of her. The grin on her face was haunting.

Shiala appeared shaken but functional, throwing husks off of herself biotically as she retreated to a more defensible location. Despite the reprieve, however, she was still injured and the swarming foot soldiers were wearing her down. Wrex laughed as his enemy fell, turning his attention to the Brutes who still charged haphazardly across the battlefield. Ducking a massive clawed arm, the Battlemaster sidestepped and fired his shotgun into its back before retreating from melee range. Garrus shifted his focus onto the husks surrounding Shiala, trying to uncover her in the waves of grey. Her barrier flickered and she called for assistance; Garrus cursed as he remembered Shepard had abandoned her helmet.

Wrex blasted through, but the Brute he'd been occupying followed, trampling husks as it rushed the distracted Battlemaster. One swipe of the claw he'd avoided earlier saw Wrex tossed aside like a ragdoll. He landed at the feet of the other Brute, receiving a punishing hit that had the turian wincing. His omnitool beeped as the krogan's primary vitals flatlined. Across the field, a fire started.

Launching herself from the flames in a blur of bloody armour, Shepard flung herself at the Brute that had tossed Wrex. She landed on its back with a shriek that rivaled the Banshee's and began tearing at its plating. There was a howl of pain from the abomination as she wrenched one free, tossing it carelessly behind her to crush what husks had survived the inferno. The scream sounded louder, more anguished, as she slammed her fist into the exposed flesh. Over and over she punched, grabbing fistfuls of loose skin and exposed bone to steady herself as the Brute tried to shake her. The smile she'd held since the Banshee died had become a deaths-head rictus.

Finally it succeeded in knocking her loose and it spun, its heavy claw slamming into the ground in a cloud of snow and dirt. When it cleared, Garrus saw that Shepard had jumped just before the moment of impact, landing on the Brute's arm and scaling it to approach the head. Teeth bared, her hand darted forward and she plunged two fingers into its eye, tearing it out. It swiped at her, her barrier sputtering out as she absorbed the hit without flinching.

Garrus shuddered as he watched her reach forward once more, one hand grasping at the fringe of the transplanted turian head as the other slid between snarling jaws, heedless of the needlelike teeth. Jerking them violently in opposite directions, time seemed to stand still as Shepard literally ripped the face from her enemy. Her crazed laughter echoed in their ears.

Shiala appeared at his side and Garrus started in surprise, guilt flashing through him. She gave him a weak smile, her focus on the human before them. He sought out Wrex as well, gesturing to the Commando to help him retrieve the downed krogan as the second Brute turned to give its full attention to the one who'd killed its comrade. When they had gotten him back into cover, Garrus began tugging medi-gel packs from his own suit to replace those Wrex had consumed. At Shiala's horrified gasp however, he quickly looked up at the fight once again.

Mouths agape, they watched as Shepard straddled the cable-and-bone neck of the Brute and gripped the sides of its head. From the way it flailed, they could see she'd ruined at least one of its arms and gouged out both of its eyes. Garrus stumbled as her bright gaze darted up to lock with his through his visor. With a quick twist that seemed almost effortless, Shepard separated the Brute's head from its body. Then, as she rode out the death throes and it slumped to the ground, she lifted the severed skull to crow her victory to the skies.

This was the scene that met the other half of the squad as they came tumbling from the base with the news that an evac was scheduled to arrive shortly. Before the carnage could register with them, Garrus had them moving. He ordered them to regroup beyond the defensive embankment, clearing a path for the extraction team.

It was only later, when they had been recalled station-side and he could catch Mordin alone, that the shaken turian explained fully what had happened. Almost pleadingly, he asked the salarian if what he'd seen was normal for humans. He liked the girl, but she frightened him; if she was crazed, he needed to know so that he could request her removal for the safety of the rest of the squad.

Silence from the normally chatty medic was unsettling, but eventually, he shook his head. In what for Mordin was an achingly slow narrative, he laid out his theories and observations, backing them up with secondary accounts gleaned from the mission reports of other squads that had been assigned humans. When he explained the survival mechanisms and the reasons Shepard was currently secluded in the medical bay, Garrus began to understand.

Hesitantly he explained the situation to his command. Saren scoffed and refused to believe it. Liara was wary but curious, grilling Mordin for any information he would give her. Shiala stood by her rescuer, encouraging Tali to follow her lead.

Wrex was thrilled.